Mirage
by Syroc
Summary: The Wasteland is a terrible place to have a pilgrimage . Luckily, however, almost everything is easier with help. Related to Binary.
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** If you haven't read Binary... then go do that. Or not. As you prefer.

* * *

**Mirage**

Tali'Zorah nar Rayya wasn't confronted with the magnitude of her mistake until she realized that it wasn't the radscorpion poison that was making her dizzy, but dehydration. But the poison certainly didn't help matters.

It was so _hot_out here. She really should have sprung for some kind of air-conditioning module for her suit, but the damned things were so expensive. And who could have known just how hard it was just to move across the sand?

And all the bugs! They everywhere! She'd been chased for the better part of an hour by a bunch of ants (the word still felt foreign in her mouth. All the human words did. But like so many others of her she liked saying them.) before the nasty creatures had given up, but her relief was short-lived because after those had come the radscorpions.

For something with such short legs and enormous pincers weighing them down the damned things could move like lightning. And they were resilient! There was military grade armour amongst her people that was less formidable than the arachnid's carapace. That damned things could take a shotgun blast to the face (did scorpions have faces?) and not be fazed! Eventually she'd had to throw her pack into its questing pincers to distract it long enough for her to get away. And even that hadn't been enough to save her completely, because she'd been stabbed right through her ankle.

The good thing about being stabbed all the way through the ankle by a poisonous stinger was that very little poison actually entered her bloodstream. If it had gotten somewhere with a bit more substance that might not have been the case. Which would mean she would either be subjected to a particularly nasty poison or suffer anaphylactic shock.

The bad thing about being stabbed all the way through the ankle was that she had been _stabbed through her ankle_. The pain that coursed up her leg was indescribable, and it only got worse with every step. She'd gasped and cursed and finally sat down beneath the dead branches of a blackened tree.

It was nice to just sit down in the shade for a moment. Or an hour. Maybe just a bit longer than that. It was difficult to say with her head spinning and her body feeling like it was made from lead and sponges. She would have to get moving soon, because there was an uncomfortable bubbling in her lungs that heralded the onset of a bad reaction to something in her suit and the day _was_dragging on.

Still... it was pretty nice here. In the shade. Just breathing. Or trying to, anyway. Just a bit longer, then? Yeah.

Who knew the wasteland outside the Fallston's walls could be so harsh? Nobody had warned her about this!

Of course, she hadn't asked anyone about the dangers. That was the problem when one acted on impulse and wild ideas: no time to prepare. She'd merely acquired a shotgun and stocked up on as much food and water as she could. It hadn't been very much, but at the times she'd thought it would be enough. It looks like she'd never be able test that theory. Which might actually be a good thing, considering how well things had gone so far. The supplies would only have ensured that her venture would go on longer.

She squinted against the glaring sunlight, and caught a hint of movement that seized her attention.

She almost didn't spot him at first. It was difficult to pick out small movements in the distance when your head feels like its about to wobble off her neck if she moved too quickly.

He came walking out of a mirage, his movements masked by the heat of the air, but eventually she spotted the lone dot of green swaying gently in the distance. She couldn't tell much more than that, but any help was better than none.

She tried to raise a hand to wave at that distant movement, but found that they weren't cooperating. They were entirely too heavy to move, let alone lift above her head, and the effort of trying made her head swim even more. She clenched her eyes and hiss through her teeth as she put even more effort into it.

Something strange happened. She felt a strange sensation of falling, and then something hit her head. She snapped her eyes open immediately, and suddenly it was night. Time had passed, though it was difficult to say just how much.

She was laying down beside a small camp fire, above with a pair of skewered iguanas were being roasted. The pain in her ankle wasn't as bad anymore, and her head wasn't swimming either.

"You must be new," a masculine voice commented.

"Muhh?" she groaned unintelligibly. Her head was still swimming. She blinked her eyes, searching for the person who had spoken to her.

It was a human, sitting on the opposite side of the little fire.

She didn't recognize him from the colony, but that was hardly surprising. With more and more quarian colonists coming in as quickly as housing could be built for them, the few humans who were trusted enough to live amongst them had a tendency to vanish into the crowd. And despite the language barrier finally being overcome (though not yet quite conquered,) they remained an insular people. She'd been told that they hadn't always been such, but nobody liked talking about why that had changed.

This human wasn't like others she had seen. He wasn't thin or skinny, but there was a certain gauntness in his cheeks and around his eyes. He wasn't missing meals, but he wasn't wasting food either. His hair was closely cropped and bleached to an auburn tint of brown by the sun, and below them were tired blue eyes that watched her carefully. There were lines beneath them that belied many nights without enough sleep.

Curiously, he wore a bright green scarf with white swirls around his neck. It was looking a bit frayed around the edges, but here and there were small scars in the fabric where they had been carefully sewn back together with great care. It looked familiar, somehow.

And, though she only noticed it now, there wasn't a shred of fear in him. It was only now that she realized that all the humans she had ever met back at the colony had always had a certain amount of worry or anxiety in their features. As if they all shared a collective fear that something was about to happen. (Given her own streak of bad luck in just one day, she didn't want to rule out the possibility.)

He smiled at her.

"I said, you must be new," he repeated. "I don't recognize you."

It took her a moment to realize that he was speaking perfect Khellish.

"I... uhn..." she groaned, and tried to sit up. This turned out to be a poor decision, because the moment her head was ellevated the world wobbled and spun dangerously. Or felt to, rather.

"Careful," the human warned concernedly. "You had a bad allergic reaction. I did what I could to patch your suit up and gave you something to perk you up, but you're not going to feel good for a while."

That was an understatement. Something was twisting inside her stomach, and it felt like there was a fire in her muscles. Her head was better, but still a bit wobbly. And her ankle felt like someone was dragging a hard metal brush through the wound.

Still, it was a surprise that there was someone out here who could handle suit repairs at all, let alone carried medicine on the off chance they came a quarian as badly off as she had been.

"'nk you," she said gratefully in a small voice.

"It's no problem. I do what I can for the scouts," he made a sound of amusement. "I don't usually find them in as bad a state as I found you, though. You were lucky."

Behind her mask, Tali's eyes went wide.

He thought she was one of the scouts. That was... good? She didn't actually know how she was supposed to feel about that. The quarian scouts were well respected back at the colony, almost as much as the rangers. He might treat her better if he thought she was one of them rather than some silly girl who thought she'd be the first person in the colony to finish their Pilgrimage.

"I'm sorry, uhm... sir?" she said, turning appellation into a question. Her hesitation didn't go unnoticed.

His eyes widened, and his smile went wide.

"You _are_new," he said with amusement. "Call me Shepard."

"I just- I've never seen you before," she admitted. "Are you from Fallston?"

For some reason the human found the question very funny.

"_Very _new," he said with a chuckle. The human threw a piece of wood on the fire, and embers rode the smoke up into the sky. "Yes, you could say that I'm from Fallston."

There was something about Khellish spoken through a human mouth that was strangely hypnotizing. His vocal cords and mouth didn't quite fit the language, and so there small differences. The words were spoken smoothly and quickly, flowing like water. It probably had more to do with him not speaking out of a microphone than it did with the actual way he spoke, but that didn't seem to matter.

Her temples throbbed and the world wobbled without warning. Shepard must have been watching for it, because he moved to her side in a flash, steadying her.

"Hey, take it easy. The meds must be wearing off," he cautioned her again. He reached over to a satchel she hadn't realized was next to her and retrieved a long metal capsule. "Here, drink this. You need to get some water in you."

"Thank you," she said gratefully as she accepted the capsule.

She fumbled with it for a few moments, her attempts to line it up with her helmet's induction port failing. It was a prospect doomed to fail, as her hands weren't nearly as agile as they might otherwise be due to whatever medicine he'd given her. Eventually the cannister fell from her clumsy fingers.

Shepard sighed, and with a dextrous hand (and those five fiddly fingers. She suppressed a shudder.) he fished it out of the folds of her mantle and connected it to her helmet himself. There was a small click and chime and then a quiet hiss as the connection was made and registered, and then

"There," he said softly. "Drink. You need to regain what you lost."

Tali gratefully did as she was advised, drinking down the distilled water with great satisfaction. The water felt like... well, like water in the desert. The throbbing in her head lessened almost immediately, and she sighed heavily as she swallowed the last drops.

"Thank you," she said again, less tired this time.

"Don't worry about it," the human said with a smile. "I'm sorry I can't do more for you."

"You've already done much more than I would have expected. I didn't think-" she stopped, embarrassed by her opinion. "The humans back at the colony, they aren't…" she trailed off uncertainly.

But Shepard seemed to understand all the same.

"They aren't exactly the most trusting lot," he agreed with her, shaking his head. "You shouldn't keep it against them. Life is hard outside the colony, even for us. They're just afraid."

"Afraid? Of what?"

"There are many things to be afraid of, but mostly it's you," he told her bluntly.

"Us?" Tali said indignantly. "But we've been trying to help! We keep them safe!"

"You do. But this is a bad place," Shepard said gravely. "I don't think the quarians back in Fallston really understand that. They're just happy to have a home. It doesn't hurt that the Migrant Fleet is in orbit in case something goes wrong."

Tali's eyes went wide in shock. He knew about the Migrant Fleet? He even knew it was _here_?! How could he know that? Nobody outside the fleet was supposed to know that!

Shepard didn't seem to notice her alarm, as he just kept on going.

"But you're a scout. You've seen the wasteland for yourself. What kind of person do you think could live down here without fear?"

Tali'Zorah put her worry aside for a moment to try to think of a response to the question.

A krogan could. Oh, they would have trouble at first. They would struggle. But that was where they excelled. They were born and bred to fight for survival. Harsh weather conditions wouldn't bother them. Radiation wouldn't kill them. Not even monstrous wildly would stop them. They would thrive in due time.

But humans… the only thing they had on quarians was that they didn't have an atrophied immune system, and five (shudder) fingers. They were vulnerable, even moreso than her own people, because of the actions of their forebears. She had only to think of her own experiences to know the truth. As bad off as she had been, she was lucky. She had survived long enough for someone with the knowledge and disposition to help her had come across her.

Not everyone could be as lucky as she. Not by a long by a long chalk.

She looked at him, watching her, calm as a mill pond.

"You aren't afraid," she pointed out.

"I'm a special case," Shepard shrugged in dismissal. "The others aren't. They were desperate, and now they're safe. They're either waiting for the other shoe to drop or they're afraid it will all be taken from them again."

That… made sense, actually.

"But let's not talk about that," the human said, and nodded towards her. "I forgot to ask earlier: what's your name?"

"Oh," Tali desperately hoped that human's knowledge of the admiralty board didn't extend beyond their names. "Uh, I am Tali'Zorah."

Shepard raised an eyebrow at her.

"... vas?" he said in question.

"Sorry," she said with a blush. Such a silly mistake! "Tali'Zorah vas Rayya."

"Well Tali'Zorah vas Rayya, in the morning I will guide you back to Fallston," he told her. "You should rest until then. I'll keep watch."

"Oh," there wasn't anything else she could say.

Back to Fallston… where she would probably be rushed back up to the Rayya and never be let back down in punishment. Where he father would scold her for doing something so foolish, so reckless… and _failing_in the process. What she had done was bad enough, but being injured and having to turn back was going to make it all the worse.

She couldn't bear to disappoint him like that. Not so soon after she started.

"Do you think I could stick with you for a little while longer, actually?" she asked him nervously. "I- this is my first excursion out here on my own, and I don't want to go back so soon."

Technically true, every word of it. But a lie all the same.

Shepard raised an eyebrow at her in question.

"You're wounded. You don't have any supplies," he pointed out critically.

"Only my ankle is hurt, and as for supplies, I think I know where to find where I left them," she countered in a rush. "I had to throw my pack at one of those radscorpions to get away, but it should still be there unless someone found it. I'll have more medical supplies too."

"Radscorpion, huh?" he mused, frowning a little. "Easy enough game. And Sae'Sorel would appreciate some venom samples."

"So it's okay?"

Shepard was quiet for a long time, watching her. Tali regretted not spending more time with any of the humans back at Fallston, because she had no idea what was going on inside his head.

"I suppose I'm the last person who should underestimate someone's resilience," he said eventually. "We'll see what we can find tomorrow. Until then, rest."

Tali couldn't help but smile at that.

Her pilgrimage wasn't done yet.

* * *

Two lone pilgrims walk into the wasteland.

It sounds like the beginning of a joke. The expectation is for them to encounter something interesting, something strange and bizarre. They are expected to comment upon it, and humour is to be found in their naivete. Everyone laughs.

But this is the wasteland. Nobody laughs when two lost souls enter, just as nobody mourns when they are buried beneath its sand. The wasteland will devour any and everyone it can, and spit their bones back out.

Two lone pilgrims walk into the wasteland.

One is wise to its treacherous ways, and walks warily between two worlds. The other is ignorant to the danger they are courting, but walks with hope and wonder and dreams of a home she has never seen.

The wasteland cares for no man, and it will destroy them both as it has so many others. With its myriad terrors, horrors and atrocities, the wasteland will consume them.

But the most perilous of all its dangers is not the monsters that stalk the dusty wastes. It is not the deadly radiation, not the scourging sun and not the poisoned earth. It is the mirage, a trick of light and heat that puts water where there is only sand. Always tempting with something so greatly desired, but never providing. It kills as surely as any claw, fang, bullet or blade.

The wasteland is made of mirages, but only a few of them tempt with something so mundane as water.

Two lone lone pilgrims walk into the wasteland. Who can say if they will walk back out?

Because war...

War never changes.

* * *

**AN:**Remember when I said I was a slave to public opinion? Well... surprise! Turns out I have all the stalwart will of a goldfish, because here we are. The idea also just wouldn't leave me alone. Stupid brain.

Anyways, like Binary this story will be short. Let me reiterate that so people will listen this time:

**THIS STORY IS GOING TO BE SHORT.**

I don't mean to sound mean, but I don't want people to get their hopes up. I expect this story to last a total of maybe 3-4 chapters long. This should not be a new experience.

Moving on...

So. Tali and Shepard have now met for the first time. Will he save her? Will they get along? Will he teach her his ways? Will they crush on each other? Will they have wild, life-affirming sex under the bright moonlight?! No. They won't. Because that's not allowed on this site, and I think I'd be rubbish at it in any case.

But nobody can stop you from _thinking _about hot xenophile action going down in the wasteland.

Remember: reviews, favs and mentions feed this beast. And you know you want to feed me. Because when I'm hungry I eat the souls of the innocent. Don't make me eat someone's soul.


	2. Chapter 2

**Mirage**

Shepard didn't know what to think about Tali'Zorah.

At first it had been nice to speak khellish again with someone who understood it, (which wasn't to say that he hadn't spoken it all. There were more than a few individuals scattered across the nation who had the dubious honor of being among the first human "bosh'tets".) and he found himself at ease in a way he hadn't been in the almost five years since he'd left Fallston. In all that time of wandering, moving from settlement to settlement and taking whatever jobs he could, only rarely had he ever felt as... normal as he did with her. Which was crazy. It was obvious that she hadn't had a lot of contact with his kind, (she kept staring at his hands. Were an extra pair of fingers _really_ worth getting worked up over?) and viewed him as an anomaly amongst oddities. But the ease, the trust... It was there all the same.

Legacy of spending his adolescent life among them, he supposed.

But having travelled with her all morning, he was forced to admit that she was hiding something from him.

And it wasn't that she wasn't a scout. He'd worked _that_ out in the first few hours when she hadn't recognized an ant trail for what it was. He'd had to explain to her, patiently, why she had to do everything she could to avoid disturbing it unless she wanted her own trail to be marked by ant pheromones, thus ensuring she's be followed by the little devils until the scent wore off. He had a hard time believing Tala'Xen would allow someone as green as she was out on their own unless he _wanted _them to get eaten. Which was a dubious prospect at best.

No, she was hiding then reason she was out there in the first place. Nobody in their right mind would go into the wasteland as inexperienced as she was without some dire need.

And yet she seemed unbothered by the slow pace he set for them. He did so out of consideration for her ankle at first, but now it was for his own sake as much as hers. Her inexperience would get them both killed if he didn't watch out for whatever missteps she made.

He wished he had a week at his disposal just so that he could teach her the basics properly, just as he had done all those years ago when he'd first been rescued. But he didn't have the luxury of time.

Tali needed her supplies, and after that he needed to bring her home. She was going to die not there. Maybe not immediately, but sooner or later she would make another mistake and not would cost her dearly.

Shepard couldn't let that happen. He owed too much to her people to let something like that happen. Not when he'd found her in a situation so close to his own.

But nothing in the wasteland could ever be so simple.

Radscorpion venom was nasty stuff, even to humans. Even the diminutive barkscorpions could do a number on a grown man's body and Radscorpions were a whole other level.

Quarians, however, were both blessed and cursed with an alien biology. The venom didn't affect them the same way it did humans (Sae'Sorel remained adamant it shouldn't affect them _at all_ despite evidence to the contrary,) and instead of crippling pain, nerve damage and liquefaction they...

... well, they tripped balls. And got liquefied, but at a somewhat slower rate. Biology is _weird._

The feeling was apparently not unlike taking a hit of jet and following it up with just enough med-x to make thing wobbly. Sae had done the science to find that out, somehow. Crazy, angry scientist lady.

Tali was lucky she hadn't suffered the full effects if what radscorpion could do to her, but even so...

"Uhm," she mumbled in embarrassment. "I _think_ I recognize that rock."

... rocks, unless they were unusually shaped, large or situated, were generally not considered a credible landmark. The one Tali was pointing to was virtually indistinguishable from an entire field's worth of midsized, nondescript stones.

It was by luck alone that her trail hadn't been wholly destroyed during the time he'd allowed her to rest. Tracking someone he'd already found wasn't he'd had to do before, but there wasn't a great difference in principle. Just... more tiresome.

He knelt down, inspecting the area for clues.

Normally he'd look for tracks. Quarian feet were quite distinctive in the wasteland, a fact he'd once tried to Tala on years ago.

But time was against them in that regard. The elements and general wildlife were both removing whatever tracks she might have left left the day before, and the further they went the less likely they'd be to find more.

Less easily destroyed, however, was her blood. There hadn't been any rain for days, and Shepard soon found what he was looking for in the form of small brownish clumps of sand. A brief taste only confirmed it, though he was quick to spit it back out. No experiments with quarian biology today

"You were here," he confirmed. "Can you remember where you came from?"

"Uhm..." she said uncertainly, casting lols about her surroundings.

That was all the response Shepard needed. He sighed, and took a closer look at the immediate area.

It didn't take him long to find a general direction from which she probably came. It was all in how and where you looked.

He wished that the wasteland had a greater range of flora. A good shrub og patch of grass most have made things so much easier. As it was he'd had to look for the tracks of other creatures, searching for those that had a tendency to follow wounded animals. Carrion feeders that might have been discouraged when they saw him come to her aid.

That, paired with the direction they'd come from, gave him a sense of where they should be going. And that direction made him grimace.

In a way Tali had been lucky. If she hadn't come across the radscorpion, or fled in the other direction she might have come to one of two NCR settlements: Gecko, or Vault City.

He could have only imagined what have happened after that. Probably nothing good.

"This way," he told Tali, pointing to the North.

And with that, they were moving once more. Tali was noticeably quicker, apparently not feeling the pain in her ankle as badly as she had that morning.

Shepard kept himself wary all the same, even if his thoughts were elsewhere.

For all that Fallston was becoming known for its unusual inhabitants, no one had discovered yet just _how_ unusual they really were. Most simply thought them to be a new breed of mutant surfacing after long seclusion.

For now, Shepard hoped things stayed that way. He'd didn't want to see his home under siege from those seeking to steal the tools and technology on his friends.

Shepard paused for a moment, realizing what he'd just thought.

_His_ home.

_His_ friends.

He'd been wandering a long time, but he had yet to find another place he could find both those things and not feel like an outsider. Maybe... maybe it was time got his pilgrimage to end. He could think of few things Lien might appreciate more than the safe return of one of her own. And it wasn't as if he'd learned _nothing_ during the course of his wandering. If would simply be a matter of picking what might be the most useful to the Migrant Fleet, and then remembering where been had last seen something similar.

The thought of returning to Fallston... oh lightened his heart more than he thought it would.

It occupied his thoughts as he and Tali tracked her trail through the wastes. The distance she'd manages to cover in her condition was actually pretty impressive. Most quarians new to the wastes found it difficult to move across the treacherous earth, but Tali'Zorah was apparently made of sterner stuff.

In fact... given a big of time and training she probably wouldn't wouldn't be half bad as a scout. She certainly had the physical requirements for it, and she was a quick study once the importance of what he was trying to teach was impressed upon her. He might have to see if he couldn't get Tala'Xen to sew about getting her transferred to his command once they got back.

Tala's command, of course. Shepard had little doubt that he's be catching all kinds of trouble from Lien for months for slipping away bin the dead of night like he had. But he'd still be teaching the recruits, most likely. He'd be shocked if any back at the colony had supplanted him as master-scout.

He frowned.

Shocked, but maybe not altogether surprised. _Someone _would have had to step into his shoes with him no longer there to coordinate patrols.

Oh well. It wasn't like he had been all that fond of responsibility in any case. And if he _did_ want his old title back, he was confident that he could get it. He'd learned quite a bit in his travels.

Shepard found himself smiling. He was really beginning to look forward to going back.

"Oh!" Tali said excitedly, pointing further into the wasteland. "I recognize that tree! We aren't far now!"

Shepard blinked, snapping out of his imagined homecoming.

"Careful," he cautioned her. "Radscorpions are nocturnal, but they will still hunt in the day if they feel you coming. Tread lightly."

The young quarian hesitated for a moment to take in his words, scanning their surroundings before advancing cautiously.

Shepard nodded in satisfaction. Yes, there might indeed be the makings of a good scout in her.

They weren't far away from the little settlement of Gecko, just a half day's walk or so. From Vault City as well, but Shepard was a little too dirty for the residents. The feeling was mutual: he found their practice of taking "servants" more than a little distasteful. Given the choice of destinations he'd always pick Gecko. It might be a little podunk village of ghouls with a leaky power plant, but he'd rather breathe in a little radiation that the rarified air of the vault dwellers.

Not too far away from Fallston either, but far away enough that people seldom found it by accident.

"Keep an eye out for movement. Tell me if you think you see anything else familiar. I'll be keeping an eye out for anything," he told her, and freed his reaper from its holster on his hip.

The reaper's familiar weight was a welcome feeling. He watched it unfold and telescope into its full length with a series of mechanical and whirs. His hands found their places with practised ease, and he allowed his body to relax just a bit as he watched the horizon. Just because nothing bad gone wrong yet was no guarantee that it never would.

"I think I see- yes, it's here! It's by a rock!" Tali called out to him in what she obviously _thought_ was a quiet voice. Shepard winced: it wasn't nearly as quiet as he might have liked. "I'll be right back!"

"How big is the rock?" Shepard asked warily. He took care to keep his voice low, hoping that his companion would take the hint.

She didn't.

"What was that?" She shouted, even louder than before. "Hold on a minute, I'll just pick this up..."

Shepard repressed the urge to sigh.

"Just be-" he called out.

"_Keelah!"_

"-careful," he finished lamely, and this time he did sigh before chasing after Tali with a grim expression.

He took in the scene at a glance, and cursed as loudly as he could.

"That is _not_ a radscorpion!" he informed her with a shout even as he unloaded a round into the creature's maw. "That is _giant _radscorpion!"

Tali'Zorah was firing wildly at the thing arachnid with her shotgun, and though it accomplished little in the way of actual damage due to the creature's thick carapace it did an good job of keeping it's attention solely on her. Which probably wasn't a good thing, actually.

"What's the difference?!" she screeched angrily, beating a hasty retreat.

"They're bigger!" and stronger, faster and a whole lot more difficult glad kill, but that was the quick answer. Still slow than a human bit quarian, of course, but fast enough to come as a nasty surprise.

Shepard realized he was going to have to keep it occupied if Tali was going going to survive. She didn't have the experience he did with the monsters, didn't know how to dance between and away from those snapping pincers or confuse it with her feet. He made a split second decision that he hoped he wouldn't gave cause to regret and tossed his rifle to her while moving to let himself between her and the beast.

She made an soundbox surprise as the gun hit her. She managed to grab it by the barrel before it hit the ground.

"Use that!" he ordered as he leapt high. "I'll keep it occupied!"

He hit the ground with a heavy stomp of both his feet that startled the scorpion into retreating s few steps, but it quickly rallied and advanced on him.

Most scorpions didn't didn't have much in the way of eyesight worth speaking of, and and did most of their hunting by scent, sound and feeling the vibrations in the ground. Radscorpions, giant or otherwise, were no exception. All the same, Shepard waved his hands in front of its many eyes, confident that even with its feeble sight it would be able to see his movements and prioritise him over Tali. They weren't exactly the smartest of creature in the world.

He snatched back his hands and skittered to the side as it lashed out with an enormous pincer, stamping his feet on the ground as he did. Hissing angrily, the scorpion turned slowly to follow him and in doing so to exposed itself to Tali.

She wasted no time in taking advantage of the opportunity and shot it. She must have found a weak point in its chitin, because a great shudder went through its body as a screech of pain sounded out.

"Hah!" she laughed at it. "Attack _me_, you dumb bug?!"

Injured, but not fatally so, the radscorpion began to turn towards Tali.

Shepard wasn't having any of that, however.

"Oh no you don't," Shepard muttered.

He darted in close, between its seeking claws, and slapped a hand hard on it'd carapace before leaping away again.

"With me!" he shouted at it, stamping at the ground again. "Stay with me!"

Tali forgotten, the radscorpion abruptly charged him. It's speed might have overtaken him had he not been expecting it.

He deflected the first probing pincer with a hard slap of his hand and dodged in close again to avoid the other. He planted a foot firmly just above where it's mouth was, arresting it's forward movement.

Unfortunately, this left him wide open for its stinger. He only had a moment's warning before it slashing toward him. He almost tripped over the scorpion's pincer in when he bleated heavily to the side and caught the stinger between his arm and chest. He clamped down hard, locking it in place in his armpit.

Of course, in doing so he greatly underestimated just how strong its tail was. Shepard was ripped off his feet and thrown bodily away.

"Shit!" Shepard hard time to cursed before he bit the ground. The force with which he landed was enough to send him rolling away on his side only to hit the tree Tali had recognized earlier. His head was swimming as he tried to regain his feet before the scorpion could press its advantage.

"Shepard!" Tali cried out, and he looked to her just in time to see his rifle come flying towards him.

That was all he had time for, however, before the radscorpion was on him once more. Not thinking, he jammed the barrel and butt of his rifle into both a pincers while he did his best to maintain his grip on it.

The scorpion pushed him backwards on his back as it tried to kill him. It flailed wildly with its claws, trying to wrench the gun away but lacking the wits to simply let go.

Shepard's eyes went wide with alarm as the stinger came down once more, and it was all he could do to crane his head to the side to avoid being stabbed through the face. (There was nothing good about being stabbed through the face.)

There was a low thud as the ground just centimetres away from his cheek became the victim of a stabbing, and he savoured then precious moment that bad been granted him by kicking it where he imagined it's genitalia might have been if it had actually possessed any that he might recognize as such. He knew there wouldn't be any, but it still gave him a warm fuzzy feeling to imagine it squealing in pain.

"Raagh!" someone screamed with atavistic fury, and Shepard realized with a start that it was Tali. She came flying from seemingly nowhere, landed on the radscorpion's back and proceeded to stab wildly at its eyes and mouth with with a long knife. "Get off of him you- you- YOU!"

There was little Shepard could do from his position save stare with an open mouth as she wailed on the arachnid with such fury that it screeched in impotent pain and fury. It tried desperately to throw her off, but it still wasn't smart enough to let go of Shepard's rifle and he kept in place long enough for her to gauge a deep hole where one of its eyes had been before it finally gave out a shrill wail and went still.

The two of them lay like that for what seemed like hours, both of them eagerly gasping for breath in the wake not their victory. Behind her blood-spattered faceplate Tali wore a fierce grin that mirrored the one Shepard was trying in vain to hide.

But the moment had to end sometime, and not just because night was fast approaching. Shepard's legs were starting to hurt from the combined weight of the radscorpion and Tali.

"Good work," he congratulated warmly, and grunted as he tried to shift the weight from his legs. "Think you could help me get this off me?"

* * *

Shepard had made another little fire to keep the two of them warm in the night, and they were were both eating their respective dinners. Shepard forced down his nausea as he bit into his grilled radscorpion, (they weren't that bad provided one was able to avoided thinking of where it came from and ignored the crunchy bits that got stuck in their teeth,) making a face of intense concentration as he did so. Tali, for her part, was slowly chewing the contents of a second nutrient capsule. As each tube was designed ttk be a single meal this was somewhat unusual. She hadn't eaten In at least a day, and the hunger had finally caught up to her.

"So is that normal?" She asked suddenly.

Shepard paused in the middle of taking a bite out of his meal, silently grateful for an excuse to not take another mouthful.

"Is what normal?" he asked in return.

"That!" she said, betraying more than a little excitement. "The tracking, the fighting, the- the everything!"

"Oh. That," speaking as someone who's back still ached from the 'everything' he'd just endured, Shepard felt justified in sounding a bit subdued. "No. Generally I try to avoid letting things get out of hand like that. I'd probably just have taken the supplies without bothering the radscorpion."

"The _giant_ radscorpion," Tali corrected him. There was no mistaking the smug grin she was wearing behind her faceplate. Turnabout was just as fair to quarians as it was to humans, it seemed.

"Yes. I wouldn't have bothered it, especially not so close to nightfall."

"But you do get into fights, right?" she pressed. "That's why you have that gun, right? How did you get one of them anyway? I thought they were reserved for-"

"So many questions for a scout," Shepard commented airily, and smiled when it instantly silenced the young quarian. "I will answer, but I'd have thought you'd know must of this already. Yes, I do get into fights. But not when it is avoidable. I am a lone scout, after all. I only need to but unlucky once to be killed."

And obscenely lucky to be saved. But it never paid to tempt fate.

"And the gun?"

"It was a gift," he said simply. At her questioning silence, he elaborated. "From Tala'Xen."

If there was ever a doubt that she wasn't really a scout, it was banished when she failed to recognize the name. _His_ name she could understand: he'd been gone for a long time. But the head of security? The person to whom she would be expected to report to in Shepard's absence? No.

"Lieutenant Tala'Xen vas Idenna. He's in charge of the Fallston armed forces," he nodded to her. "In charge if _you_, if you were really a scout."

"Oh," Tali said in a small voice, no longer excited now that she'd she'd been discovered. "He transferred out?" She tried hopefully.

Shepard snorted, and with a flick of his wrist activated his omnitool.

"I keep in touch," he told her brightly. "But if you like I can confirm both that and your status with Sae'Sorel or Lien'Vael. Head scientist and captain of the _Idenna _respectively."

Tali'Zorah slumped in defeat.

"No, don't bother," she said with a heavy sigh. "I'm going to be in trouble, aren't I?"

"'Going to be'?" Shepard repeated archly. "You've been in trouble ever since you left Fallston. There are things out here I wouldn't lead a full squad against, never mind face alone. There are _people_ that-" he scowled. "That don't bear mentioning. The humans you've net are afraid for a _reason_. This is _not_ a good place!"

"You keep saying that," Tali pointed out. "Aren't you glad to have a home?"

"A home?" he said, and scoffed. "This planet isn't a home, Tali. It's where I live, yes, and I like it our here a lot of the time... but it's not my home. It's not your home. This place is for the radscorpion's and the super mutants and the deathclaws and the raiders. This place will kill us all if it gets a chance. Who would want a home like this?"

He chuckled darkly, and tossed the remains of his meal into the fire. He wasn't hungry anymore.

"Talking with you helped me realize that. 'Home' isn't a place you're born or live in. It's wherever you want it to be, with whoever you want it to be."

He let her think on his words for a moment.

"... You read that somewhere, didn't you?" she accused him, sounding just a bit angry. He couldn't imagine why.

"Maybe," Shepard admitted. Every once in a while the Old World handed him a pearl of wisdom. So what if came in the form of a postcard? "Still true, though."

"So you say," Tali grumbled. "But do you want to know something? My home is no better than yours!"

She glowered into the campfire petulantly.

"Our ships might not have your monsters or your radiation or whatever else you're so afraid of, but they're still killing us! Our ships were never meant to sustain us this long! All it takes for hundreds to die is for a broken air scrubber to go unnoticed! Or a fire to start on the engineering levels, gutting the ship and killing the entire crew! If a harvest fails on one of the live ships _millions_ would starve!"

She paused to regain her breath. Her tirade had come so fast and furious that she'd barely taken time for air, and it was only now that she was forced to stop lest she died harm to herself. This was obviously a sore subject for her, and he had thought about it for some time. When she next spoke she did so with slower, more measured words.

"We can't even breathe the same air as you because of our ships. I'll probably never leave this suit for longer than a few hours," she stopped glaring at him, returning her gaze to the little campfire between them. "And the rest of the galaxy doesn't even care. All they see are beggars and thieves."

She made a sound that was like a combination of a heavy sigh and groan.

"That's why we're here. We need this planet if we want to survive."

Shepard frowned, but didn't argue her point. There was little to be gained from arguing who had a wise lot in lot, and even if there had been he suspected that many of their experiences mainly boiled down to their own perspectives in any case.

Still... she was right, actually sad as that sounded. And if they really were going to make a home on Earth the least he and others like him could do was help them lay the foundation.

"So, why did you come out here for anyways?" he asked, deciding to change the subject. "You aren't aren't scout, so there must be a reason for you to be out here."

If it was possible to sink into one's own environment suit Shepard Shepard was sure Tali would have been doing so. She certainly looked like she was giving a serious attempt.

"Uhm," she muttered something too low for him to hear.

"What was that?"

"I said mmfhrafmmf..." her words trailed off into unintelligible mumbles.

"You're going to have to speak up, Tali."

She too took a deep breath.

"I wanted to take my pilgrimage here," she said in defeat.

Shepard sat in stunned silence as he took in this new information. And then...

"You just wanted to explore a new world, didn't you?" he accused her gently with an almost-laugh.

"This is a new planet, with aliens never seen before! And ruins! And monsters!" she even managed to sound as if she were blushing. "And everyone talks about the things the scouts are finding in some of the ruins! Things that no one has seen, even back on the citadel! I thought... well, I thought I might find something that I could bring back to the fleet."

Shepard found himself laughing despite the implication that the quarians might be plundering the ruins of his forefathers. They were welcome to whatever they found, so far as he was concerned. Maybe in their hands it would finally come to a better use than humanity had.

But the idea of Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, whose bumbling had gotten her in trouble fresh out of Fallston, trying to get through some of the hellholes he had seen in his travels without getting horrifically killed was darkly humorous to him.

Tali joined him with a quiet titter, even if she didn't she the reason for his mirth.

"What did you have in mind?" Shepard asked when his amusement died down enough for him to ask.

Tali grinned fiercely behind her faceplate.

"Well, I've heard some stories, and I was thinking about..."

The night dragged on as the two pilgrims discussed what they might salvage from the ruins of the Old World, one looking to prove their worth and the other to find find a home.

Simple desires, to be certain. But important, all the same.

* * *

**An:** Hello people. We need to talk.

This is kind of a good news/bad news/ good news style of thing. Don't get too worried though: it's nothing too bad. Good news? New chapter! Yay! It took me a few days to get everything copied up, cause I had to use... a phone. (A minor improvement over the other devices I've tried, as it gives me access to Google drive, and through that a really simple spellchecker and easy access to my stuff.) I'll probably be fishing out typos and ruined formatting for days, so please excuse whatever glaring flaws you see. I'm doing the best I can. Bad news? It's probably going to be some time before I get my laptop fixed and can do any more writing. Because this? This is bullshit. I'd have had this up weeks ago if in didn't have to mess about with this nonsense. Not to worry, though! Because I'll just be switching to pen and paper, and then transcribing whenever I have access to something with a keyboard on my "wandering-hobo-beardy-writer-dude" thing I'm doing atm. (Greets from Denmark, btw.) Not as efficient, maybe, but hopefully it means that when I do update they'll come in storms.

Anyways, enough with the boring stuff. Let's talk story.

So, Shepard's been time skipped a bit, but I did did that mostly because I wanted him to have seen the world a bit more than he already had. I wanted to go with three years originally, but when confronted by then Canon age difference between Shepard and Tali along with basic math I discovered some Unfortunate Implications. So, more time outside, and since I'm already fudging timelines a bit I decided to put another two years on Tali. That should make her seventeen, which is... close enough? I still needed her to be young enough to be silly, and not quite her normally cutely snarky self. Hopefully I've found the balance. If not... well, next chapter is tali-centric. I'll have to put in more work. Do tell me which way I should be leaning.

Now, be good little readers and GIVE ME YOUR REVIEWS, YOUR FAVS AND FOLLOWS! PUT ME ON THE TVTROPES! SUBMIT TO SYROC! SUUBMIIIIIIIIT!

'Till next time, peoples. Take it easy and have fun ;p


	3. Chapter 3

**Mirage**

To hear Shepard tell the tale, humanity had once been a species every bit as cultured an asari, as engenius as a salarian and as militant as a turian. It was hard to take a statement like that seriously when the person making was someone who would stoop down at stick his hands into a pile of excrement to find out how long ago the creature been there without hesitation. Once someone sees you willingly put your hand fist-deep into feces your credibility tends to suffer a bit. (And nobody wants to shake hands.)

Of course, Shepard had been telling her lots of stories lately. He had a good many to tell, after all, what with travelling from one side of the continent to the other.

He'd told her of the lands to the west, south and east. (Though not the north. That, apparently, was not a place that he dared tread without the direst of needs.) He spoke of the NCR, Free Vegas and the fledgling city-states of the east coast. The bustling streets of the Hub, the lively halls of the Strip and cities built in the fallen monuments of the Old World. He told her of the terrible lands that had once been the home of Caesar's Legion, but which had become a horrific place of brutal savagery and terrible war.

However, looking at the strange robot hard at work disassembling another robot while belting out a merry work-tune at a volume normally reserved for concerts and explosions, she could _almost_ believe it. If only because it had taken her the better part of a week to get the damned monstrosity to work at all. And the reason for it was a very simple one: humans were _weird_.

There was just no avoiding it. From their abnormal obsession with "personal space", (she'd found out about that one a few days into their journey. She'd walked shoulder-to-shoulder with Shepard for almost the entire day before he'd gently but firmly told her that she was too close for comfort,) their bizarre fur (she was reasonably certain they were the only species that actually _wanted_ to live with such an impracticality. Just imagining what it would do an environmental suit's air filters made her shudder.) and a more recent development: their _ass-backwards technology_.

Tali hadn't known what to expect once they arrived at the robotics lab that Shepard had led them to, but it certainly wasn't _this._

There was a theory she'd read some time ago floating around the extranet. It was from some famous xenoanthropologist, and it lamented the wasted potential that came occurred whenever the Citadel made official first contact with a species. Apparently introducing a species to the wonders of element zero and all the other technology the Citadel had to offer effectively stymied any possible developments they might have made, which may in some ways be leading to a technological and cultural stagnation that had persisted for centuries.

If what she had seen here was indication, humanity could have been object lesson in just what could be lost in such cases. Because through whatever stupidly bizarre shrug of fate humanity had never invented the microprocessor. They could build and program robots, they could fabricate weapons that no one in Citadel space imagined possible (Tali had found and repaired a funny looking gun that looked like a metal box with a handle attached to it, and had been _very _ surprised when it had fired a pillar of coherent light so powerful that it burned a hole through half an inch of metal plate armor. The amount of energy such a thing required was… staggering. And humanity had crammed it into a package that could fit in her palm.) and they could successfully burn the vast majority of their own planet with nuclear fire… but they just couldn't build a microprocessor.

It was like leaning someone had built a spaceship out of wood… that actually _worked._ _Perfectly._

It shouldn't be possible. It was just too improbable - no, too _stupid_ - for them not to have come across the notion of just making things smaller.

But no. Instead they'd developed ridiculously complex computing system based off of physical tapes, three-dimensional images and recordings, into a system that was as alien to Tali's beaten-up-but-still-functional omnitool as she herself was to Shepard. The two simply could not interface. There was only one way for her to interact with a human computer, and that was with her own hands.

Which was something of a hassle, considering she couldn't read a word of their funny language. Half the time spent in her crash-course in breaking human systems had been spent with Shepard dutifully, slowly and painstakingly translating every. Single. Word. Password breaking had been the easiest part of it all: once she'd learned the basic logic behind it she'd had a much easier time of things. Creating programs, running existing programs, even just reading maintenance logs was a slog the likes of which she'd never imagined, most of it being physically impossible for her to do. All the while, she'd suspected that Shepard was just playing some incredibly elaborate and immensely cruel joke on her.

But in the dead of the night after she'd replaced the last holodisk in the old robot she'd taken to called "Handy Man" after Shepard had informed her of the popular name for its model, and on a whim decided to see what happened when she powered it on. She'd been hugely surprised when it jumped to life, righting itself with its three limbs like some kind of demonic octopus and then lighting off the ground with a powerful blast from a jet-thruster under its main computing unit.

"_The ol' gray mare, she_ _aint what she used to be!_" the robot shout-sang with gusto as it gleefully ripped into another robotic form with a pair of saw-blades and a microlaser. "_Aint what she used to be, aint what she used to be, __**MANY LONG YEARS AGO!**_"

She'd been watching it ever since as it went about its business ripping apart other robots. It had been at it for the better part of an hour, rambling on and on about some old horse and how it was going to brutally murder the "filthy communists".

Whatever a communist was, she hoped they stayed away. After seeing Handy Man hard at work on inanimate robots she could only too well imagine what he might do to an organic victim.

There was a wail of tortured metal as Handy Man tore loose a section of armor, and with all three of its thin, spindly arms it dug into the inner workings of the other machine. It wasn't an especially comforting image.

"Almost done here, ma'am!" the robot reported merrily. "I'll soon have myself properly powered up, and then we can resume the slaughter properly!"

"That's-" she started, and swallowed hard. She was talking to a _robot_. "That's-" a robot that wanted to kill people! But not her. Probably. possibly. "That's very good."

She was doomed.

"Didn't quite catch that ma'am!" the robot shouted, and one of its three eyes swivelled around to look at her. "Hmm, we should see if we can't find you a proper uniform before we commence the slaughter. It's no good if the commies don't know who's killing them!"

She realized all too late that the machine wasn't programmed to understand khellish. A glaring technical flaw, in her opinion. She sighed: she'd need Shepard again if she wanted to have any hope of not being eviscerated.

"Stay here," she told it, and immediately felt foolish for doing so. It wasn't like it could understand her.

"What's that? "Good work, soldier?" Thank you ma'am! I'll keep right at it, and then we can _burn the filthy commies right out of our glorious nation! For liberty! For justice! __**FOR THE AMERICAN WAY!**_"

Good _grief_, why would anyone program a personality like that? It was positively _ghastly!_

She left the machine to its task, quietly slipping away into a corridor in search of her alien companion. The crumbling hallway was filled with the sound of music as Handy Man started up his song once again, happily ripping apart robots in search of energy cells to salvage.

"_The ol' gray mare, she kicked up the whiffletree, kicked up the whiffletree-_" the song trailed off for a moment as she rounded a corner, thankfully. Her relief was short-lived, however. "-_**MANY LONG YEARS AGO!**_"

She cringed at the volume, hoping that nobody besides she and Shepard was still around. If not, Handy Man might get his wish sooner than he might like.

She arrived at the office that the two of them had converted into base camp. It seemed strange to think that she would be so grateful for something as simple as carpet, but even after two hundred years of neglect the building's soft flooring came as a welcome change to the wasteland. The uneven and shifting ground, the endless pebbles and the all-too often burning heat of the sand all came together in a vile conspiracy to send lances of pain through her feet. The wound in her ankle, despite its miraculous lack of infection, (whatever Shepard had given her was apparently to microbes what a thresher maw was a volus banker,) was still rather painful. She still had a noticeable limp, and trying to move it too much still made her cry out in pain.

The room had originally only had two entrances, only one of which had been a true exit. The other had led to another office. But time had taken its toll, and the other room had collapsed into the floor below, which turned out to be a lab of some kind. Shepard had been spending most of his free time down there while she had spent frustrating herself by trying to understand how humanity had done the impossible. She'd never ventured down there with him: there hadn't been enough machinery or mechanical servants to hold her interests for very long. Besides, Shepard was doing a good job of its all on his own if all the documents he kept bringing up were any indication. (Tali wept for all the trees humanity must have pulped in order to keep their strange fascination with printed documents alive.)

She paused at the door, hearing voices. It seemed he was present today.

She paused at the doorway, not wanting to interrupt his conversation.

He was sitting at a heavy desk, his feet carelessly resting on its surface as he leaned back into a run-down chair, balancing only on the rear pair of legs as he gently rocked back and forth. He didn't notice her approach, as he was too engrossed with speaking to whoever he was talking to through his omnitool.

His sniper rifle lay disassembled on the desk, and she winced visibly as she saw it. While the damage done to the weapon from the radscorpion had been minimal, there was still a noticeably warping on its barrel where the arachnid had managed to actually bend it just enough to make firing it a very bad idea. Even if the barrel was still serviceable, it would be completely inaccurate until Shepard could spend some time to correct the aim.

"-Lien, I'm telling you we're _fine_," Shepard said with a long-suffering sigh. "Really. You don't have to send out the-"

"_Fine?_" this came from the omnitool on Shepard's wrist. "_Fine?! You run off in the middle of the night, I don't hear from you in years, and now you're telling me everything is fine?_"

"Well…" Shepard had the grace to sound ashamed. "It is. We're just-"

"_John'Shepard nar Idenna, I am your captain! I was there the day they hauled your scrawny butt into camp! __Do not try to calm me down!_"

Tali squirmed in sympathy. There were few things as bad as getting chewed out by one's captain. Especially when you knew them personally, as it was plain enough to see that Shepard was. She did make a note of the very conspicuous "nar" in his name, though. And his first name. (She could chalk that up as yet another weird thing about humans to put on her mental list. Really, who introduced themselves with their family name?)

"I'm not-" Shepard stopped, frowned and then shrugged. "Okay, I _was _trying to calm you down. Sorry. But I just wanted to let you know that I'll be home soon!"

"_Really?_" the captain practically growled. "_Finished wandering the wastes, have you? Done causing problems all across the continent?_"

Tali wouldn't have thought Shepard capable of blushing until that moment of intense.

"I've not been making _that_ much trouble," he protested half-heartedly.

"_No?_" the woman on the other end of the connection said archly. There was a series of chimes as secondary programs were activated. "_Did you know you're wanted by the NCR military for suspected involvement in raider activity?_"

"... No?" Shepard said after a nervous pause. "Wait, who told you that?"

"_A sergeant Williams. Apparently she's been dispatched to bring you in for questioning. She asked us if we knew anything about your whereabouts_."

"Shit. She's been tracking me since she spotted me in Arizona," Shepard cursed. "I didn't even know the NCR patrolled that far out. What'd you tell her?"

"_We_ _didn't tell her anything_," Lien said firmly. "_But __Tala'Xen_ _told her to 'go kick rocks'_," there was a small pause as both parties absorbed this knowledge. "_What does that even mean, anyway?_"

"It's a more polite way of being rude," Shepard explained. "But besides that-"

"_We've also been contacted by a representative from Free Vegas_," the captain gave Shepard no time to form a proper response to her accusations.

"But-"

"_And a 'Brotherhood of Steel'_."

"_Do not let them anywhere near Fallston!"_ Shepard all but shouted, eyes wide in alarm. "Shoot them on sight if you have to!"

"That would have been very useful information to have months ago, Shepard," Lien admonished harshly. "As it is, we've had to start sending out escorts with the scouts."

"I wouldn't have _known_ to if I'd stayed!" Shepard defended. "I'd never met one of them before I left!"

"_And that's why you keep in regular contact with your captain!_" Lien snapped. "_You have information we need, Shepard. You cannot just disappear like that!_"

"I kept in contact with Tala'Xen," Shepard seemed to be aware of how feeble this excuse sounded, because he wasn't able to muster much confidence in it.

"_Tala'Xen is a good soldier and he keeps us safe, but he is not a captain. He is not your captain!_" Lien snapped at him. "_And more importantly he not in charge of Fallston_."

Shepard had no response to that. He looked frustrated, like he _wanted_ to say something but just couldn't find the words for it.

"Sorry," he said eventually, sounding genuinely apologetic.

Neither of them said anything for a moment. Tali'Zorah didn't know exactly what kind of relationship the two of them had, but even she could tell that the sudden burst of anger was unusual for them by the awkwardness that was left in its passing.

"_Don't worry about it_," Lien said awkwardly after a long while, sounding more worried than forgiving. "_Just come home as soon as you can, yes? We miss you_."

"I will, Lien," Shepard assured her, smiling to himself. "We just need to finish up here-"

"_We? Who else is with you, Shepard?_"

The young woman in question tensed at her answer, quietly dreading what would come next. Shepard didn't seem to be _fully_ aware of who she was. Or rather who she was related to. A surge of hope rose in her chest as Shepard began to answer-

"Tali'Zorah nar Rayya," the scout informed Lien guilelessly, dashing Tali's desperate wish. There went any hope of keeping this quiet. "I found her out in the wastes a few days back."

"_You_ _found her?_" Lien said with clear relief. "_Keelah,_ _that's one headache I relax about it. Admiral Zorah has been hounding me for days for news_."

"_**-MANY LONG YEARS AGO!**_"

Shepard jumped a bit at the sudden noise, but he settled back down once it died away again. Tali winced: the robot had been carrying on for some time, and the song was beginning to grate on her nerves.

"Well, she's with me now," Shepard reported. "We're picking through the ruins of an old R and D building, following up on a rumour I heard."

"_Shepard, you aren't __really __still thinking about your pilgrimage right now, are you?" The disapproval in Lien's voice was palpable. "You can't just drag her along behind you while you chase after ghosts! She's-_"

"Hey, hear me out, okay?" Shepard appealed. There was a frustrated grunt from the omnitool, but no protest. The scout took that for assent. "Right. First, I'm not dragging her anywhere. She came out here on her _own_ pilgrimage. Second, this isn't just some wasteland ghost story. The company that built this place was doing so heavy research into diseases. Serious, nasty diseases. Engineered plagues. The kind of things that could kill an entire city in a few weeks and leave the rest a wreck in no position to resist."

Tali's eyes went wide in horror.

"_Shepard! What are you thinking?! That's __monstrous__!_"

"Lien, they were researching a _cure_ for them!" Shepard told her eagerly. "And they were successful! Or partially, at least. The documents I've gotten a hold of talk about some kind of cure-all vaccine that would be effective across the board. Think about it! A cure for disease! _All of them!_"

Tali's breath hitched at this new information.

Total immunity from sickness? It sounded like something from a dream, an impossibility. And it was, too. The idea was _ludicrous_.

She had to remind herself that there was a singing robot just a few rooms away happily imagining all kinds of grisly fates to inflict upon unsuspecting communists, wholly devoid of any real processing power worth mentioning. And run on fusion-powered batteries small enough she could hold in her hand. If they could do that, what else could they have developed?

A greater part of her wanted to burst in immediately and demand that Shepard resume his search for the mysterious cure. The applications it could have, the incredible boon to her people it could become if it could be adapted...

A smaller part couldn't help but notice that Shepard hadn't told her about any of this. She'd asked about any possible insights into robotics that his people might have had, but he'd never even mentioned the possibility of finding anything like this!

"Are-" the other quarian said in a hushed voice. "Are you certain? You know this to be true?"

"I know that research was done here," Shepard hedged. "I don't know if it's the cure, but there might be clues to where we could find it."

Lien didn't answer at first. She was no doubt in the same mindstate as Tali, too overwhelmed by the possibility of a miracle drug that could deal with the severely weakened quarian immune system.

"Find what you can, Shepard," she said eventually. "But don't do anything foolish. Tell me when you're ready for extraction."

Shepard smirked, and opened his mouth as if to answer.

But Handy Man chose that moment to make an appearance. Tali almost screamed with fright when she felt one of its spindly little arms prod her shoulder gently. She whirled in place, glaring at the robot as it drew closer.

"Ma'am, I have been successful in my- _great scott!_" it boomed. All three of its limbs whirred, hummed or hissed as its various weapons powered up. "A communist! Quickly, ma'am, **cower behind my graceful arms as I disembowel the scum! TO GLORIOUS VICTORY!**"

Of _course_ the damnable robot would pick _now_ of all possible times to go crazy! Not enough that she had to deal with a murderous machine, it also had to put them at risk of not finding a cure for her people!

Shepard's reaction was almost comical to see. His alarm at the suddenly _much_ louder, much _closer_ Handy Man caused him to loudly curse and flinch with his entire body, Which in turn caused the chair he was sitting on to fall out from under him and send him tumbling backwards.

Handy Man moved to take advantage of this, making to charge through the doorframe.

"No!" Tali shouted, barring the robot entry to the room with an arm. "You can't! He's not an enemy!"

Sadly, Handy Man had not learned khellish since she'd last talked at him.

"Dammit, ma'am, I can't understand you if you insist on mumbling!" Handy Man complained as it looked for a way around her.. "Get out of the way before he gets his commie-germs on you! **You hear me you red bastard?! KEEP YOUR FILTHY DISEASES TO YOURSELF!**"

"_Shepard?!_" Lien's voice shouted from his omnitool worriedly. "_What's going on?_"

"Tali, what is going on?" Shepard echoed nervously, by now back on his feet and edging away slowly. "I thought you said you didn't know how to make it work?"

"I was about to tell you!" Tali shouted, trying to push Handy Man away. "But then I heard you talk and-"

"**GET YOUR OWN STATE SECRETS YOU COMMIE BASTARD!**" Handy man roared at Shepard. An eyestalk focused on Tali. "Really Ma'am, I _must_ insist that you get out of the way! I might inadvertently eviscerate you!"

"Shepard, you need to go!" She snapped at the human, ignoring the robot as it struggled to get past her. "It won't hurt me. I think."

"Don't worry ma'am! **I SHALL PROTECT YOU! WITH **_**FIRE!**_" a gout of flame belched from one of its arms demonstratively.

Shepard looked over her shoulder to Handy Man, then to Tali, then to the disassembled rifle on the desk. There was a tense moment as he briefly considered retrieving it before he shook his head. He gave Tali a grim look.

"I'll be in the lower levels," he told her briefly. "Find me after you deal with the robot."

And with that he said he took off, his omnitool shouting for an explanation all the while..

Tali sighed in relief as the last trace of him disappeared into the lower levels. That relief was short-lived, however.

"Dammit, ma'am!" Handy Man wailed. "He got away! Come, we must give chase! _**TO BATTLE!**_"

The robot tore past her, shunting her roughly out of the way as it gave chase. Their little campsite was thrown into chaos as Handy Man bulldozed his through it, smashing the desk to pieces and sending the documents and rifle parts flying through the air.

Tali took a moment to regain her balance in the wake of Handy Man's charge, but quickly took off after it once she had. She was surprised at the turn of speed the robot could manage, as it was already halfway into the lower levels before she could follow it.

"Wait!" she called out to it desperately. "Stay there, don't do anything!"

"What's that ma'am? You want his bones to make a necklace?" Handy Man asked/shouted.

"Why would anyone want that?!"

"And his skull for a goblet, too? A bit grisly for my tastes, ma'am, but I will see to your orders!"

"Stop pretending you understand me!"

"Thank you, ma'am! I don't get complimented on my probes nearly enough!"

"I didn't-" Tali started out with a venomous hiss, but stopped herself. "Augh! You stupid robot!"

"Ma'am, please! You'll fry my modesty circuits if you keep this up!"

"Stop that!"

The lower levels of the West Tek Pathogenics and Automation Labs (not that Tali knew or particularly cared that that was its name,) was in surprisingly good condition if one ignored the occasional collapsed section if ceiling or cracked wall. The building had been built to last, and though it had not survived the nuclear apocalypse unscathed it had weathered the test of time admirably. The white ceramic tiles that made up the walls and flooring were valiantly keeping up the fight against entropy even if a few of them had been shook loose by the shockwaves.

The rather impressive lab that Tali found herself was not an impressive display, however. Shepard had already been through it, and he'd left the whole place looking as if a tornado had swept through it. There were documents and holodisks spread out across the entire lab, covering almost every available surface, removing the smaller lab equipment from the desks in order to make more space. This was particularly interesting because the lab seemed to be large enough to comfortably six humans to work at their own individual work stations and still have some space left over.

It seemed that Shepard's delvings into this place had been every bit as thorough as her own forays into learning human computing. Likely with more success, too, no matter that she would occasionally dragoon him into helping her with her efforts. But not too much, it would seem.

If she'd had the presence of mind to notice, she might have been somewhat concerned at the alarming amount of refrigerators lining the walls. While not unusual for a medical lab to have a few cooling units dedicated to the preservation of biological samples, the amount to be found in the lab was well in excess of the normal amount. Whatever kind of research was going on here, it had required a _lot_ of organic material. She might also have the very curious symbol painted on each of them: a neon green biohazard insignia. (Though she wouldn't have known what it meant, it _was_ ominous enough to merit watching out for.)

But as mentioned earlier, Tali made no note of this. She was far too busy trying to restrain Handy Man from attacking Shepard once again. This turned out to be a pointless endeavour, because the robot's three limbs guaranteed that it would always have at least one free with which to attack.

"Damn it, Tali!" the human shouted at her. "That is _not_ how you deal with a robot!"

"_What's going on over there?!"_ Lien demanded loudly from Shepard's omnitool. "_Shepard?!_"

"I'd like to see _you_ do any better!" Tali shouted back at him angrily. "I can't hack this thing! It's too damned primitive!"

"Who said anything about _hacking_ it?!" Shepard snapped, and ducked under a whirring sawblade. It ripped into the refrigerator behind him, and long streams of vapour escaped from the cold depths with a hiss. "You have a _shotgun! Use it, damn you!_"

"_Damn it! I'm sending a dropship your way, Shepard,_" Lien said urgently. "_Don't turn off your omnitool!_"

"Compliments will get you nowhere you red bastard! **NO MERCY FOR COMMIES!**" Handy Man roared, struggling against her. "Let me go ma'am! I can take him!"

Tali felt it was oddly appropriate that the method she was using to deactivate the comparatively primitive robot was brute force. With a shotgun.

The weapon in question hadn't seen much use since its spectacular failure to hurt the (_giant!)_ radscorpion, as even in its damaged state Shepard's rifle was still more than powerful enough to render anything that attacked them into breakfast or an unpleasant memory. (And sometimes it was hard to tell which with Shepard.) Which was just as well, considering that she'd never really had much practice with it before.

It was currently attached to its holster on the small of her back, which would make it difficult to free without freeing Handy Man to do what it wanted to Shepard. She couldn't hold the robot back without only one arm, after all.

"Get ready to move!" she cried out to Shepard, whose only response was to duck under a questing saw blade and skitter away to the side before it could split his face in two. It tore another hole in another refrigerator instead, sending up another hissing trail of vapour.

Tali let go of Handy Man with one hand, using it to instead tear her shotgun loose from its holster. The robot turned an eyestalk towards her to see what had caused her sudden change in attitude

"Aha! _Now_ I understand, ma'am!" Handy Man cried in understanding, and ceased struggling against her. "You want to kill him yours-"

Tali seized upon the robot's lowered guard without hesitation. The shotgun hadn't even finished unfolding before she'd shoved its muzzle between its armoured segments and shot once, twice and thrice before her weapon overheated and she was forced to stop. Handy Man jerked with the first shot, its armour worthless in such close quarters against Tali's weapon. The second sent out a shower of sparks and a quick shudder. The third was by far the most impressive, as its internal fuel cells seemed to have been ruptured and then catastrophically reacted with the sparking circuitry. Brief plumes of flame shout out of every crack in Handy Man's chasis as the robot's limbs went limp and its body flopped to the side in an almost comical manner.

The shotgun blasts were thunderously loud in the confines of the laboratory, the sound trapped inside its porcelain-tiled walls. Tali was glad her ears were protected by her suits audio-receivers, as the sound wasn't nearly loud enough to do her any lasting harm.

Shepard, on the other hand, was momentarily stunned by the deafening noise. He was left clutching his ears and groaning on the ground.

"Holy shit that was loud," he cursed, rolling onto his back. He lay there panting for a moment, staring up at her with a feeble grin. "Whew. That's the only one you got working, right?"

Tali was looking at her fallen robot with no small amount of remorse. She'd spent so long getting the damned thing to work, only for her to turn it back into scrap only a few hours later. She didn't regret the robot's fate: the damned thing had been a monster! But all that work she'd put into understanding how it worked, all those long nights spent trying to riddle out the meaning in its stupidly complex computing systems

She shook her head and tucked her weapon back in place.

"Yeah," she said with a heavy sigh. "It's a shame it went insane like that."

Shepard rolled his eyes at that.

"What do you expect from a two hundred year old machine?" he said, and groaned. "Gah, I wish it wouldn't have shouted, though. My head hurts."

Tali smiled a bit at that.

"Yeah, that was odd. It was kind of funny after a while, but then it just got annoying," she frowned at the prone human. "Are you going to stay down there all day?"

Shepard made a noise of displeasure.

"Yeah, hold on a minute, just a bit tired. I'll-" he sneezed without warning, and dark specks appeared on Tali's faceplate. He rubbed at his nose absently. "Ugh, that came out of nowhere."

Tali grunted in disgust, and wiped the human's fluids off her helmet. As she did, she noticed that something was dripping out of Shepard's nose… something dark. It was difficult to tell through her helmet's tinted glass visor, but she had a sneaking suspicion. A terrible suspicion that chilled her blood.

"Shepard," she started with worry. "Is that blood?"

The human froze, and slowly brought a hand up to his face to see for himself. It came back with several droplets of the fluid, and the way his expression fell was all the confirmation she needed to know it was.

"Oh," he said in a small voice. "That can't be good."

* * *

**AN:** Well, I'd like to start this off with a simple statement: I am a fool.

Yes, I know: you're shocked. I've done a good job of pulling the wool over your eyes, but the truth is that I am not _actually_ a supreme being. I make mistakes just like you do. Worse ones, even, because mine are just so dumb that I wish I had a time machine just so I could use it to go back and give past-me (he's _always_ causing trouble! I swear, sometimes I just wish he'd go away.) _that look_. You know the one. It's the one teachers give you when you stand up before the class and start talking straight out of your ass. The one that says "oh god, why didn't you just say you don't know? Please stop. You're hurting my career by being this dumb." And then once everyone leaves the room they have a quiet cry and drink another glass of cheap scotch to make the hurting stop.

Not that I ever got that look. Nope. Never. *_cough*_

Anyways, I am only human, and to err is human. And I'm, like, human times three. I am superhumanly human. I could have my own comic where I just mess up. Like, _constantly._ Which might not be a totally bad idea.

Why do I say this? Because I originally wanted this chapter to take place in Big MT. And you know what? I realized only after I got like four pages into the chapter that, given in-game sources I've found, it'd probably be somewhere to the South/Southwest of Vegas rather than the Northwesterly direction I'd detailed last chapter.

This clearly means that I cannot distinguish up from down.

Well, I suppose if I can't have fun with the Think Tank, I suppose I'll just have to fall back on Fallout lore. (You can probably see why Handy Man exists now, though. Man, I _really_ wanted to have fun with Borous.) The specifics of the lore will be explained in the next chapter.

Also, please forgive me if I horribly botched the whole robotics/computing thing. I know next to nothing about such things, but who would I be if I let a little ignorance get in my way?


End file.
